News from the GEO BON secretariat

First steps in the creation of a Latin American BON

During a three-day meeting, from March 29th to 31st, held at Jasper-Ridge-Biological-Preserve, experts representing biodiversity observation initiatives in Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, met with some of the world’s leading biodiversity monitoring experts from the GEO BON Network including the California Academy of Sciences, CSIRO, Conservation International-TEAM, EcoHealth Alliance, iDiv, Instituto Humboldt, Kansas University, NASA, NatureServe, UC Davis, UNEP-WCMC, University of Florida, and Yale University, to discuss biodiversity monitoring challenges in Latin-America, and plan for a future robust regional biodiversity network that can contribute to a global network.

Information on biodiversity change and loss is urgently required to characterize threats, prioritize responses, and measure the success of our actions, especially in Latin-America. GEO BON, with this initiative, is responding to this necessity, providing a discussion platform that will serve to diagnose key bottlenecks, barriers and limitations in the collection, management, and analysis of observations for biodiversity data mainstreaming, that is, in the entire data process from collecting an observation in the field to building an indicator that can support decisions in Latin-America.